


Two Hearts

by b_kolacki



Category: Beydan - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-02-01 18:22:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12710415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b_kolacki/pseuds/b_kolacki
Summary: Jordan's......how u say? Rough around the edges.





	1. Morning sunshine.

Today is his birthday and he wakes up to the clanging of pans and the smell of something sweet. The apartment is small with only two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. It's easy for scent to travel around and fill up the place. He gets up earlier than he usually would, just because he can hear Beyoncé rattling things and making extra noise to try and wake him up to his “surprise” so he won't miss it the way he did three years before. Want to make Jordan change his ways? Show Beyoncé heating up a plate of breakfast food, trying really hard not to look disappointed while her fluffy scrambled eggs turn to radiated rubber bullets. She gets him up later now, he goes to sleep earlier.

He pulls himself out of bed the second time she slams a cabinet door far too hard to be an accident, he doesn't bother to pull his shirt on, it's warm inside and out. He stretches out, listening for his joints to pop and when some of them don't, he has to stop himself from pushing hard enough to pop them out of socket. 

He pads into the kitchen and sees Beyoncé’s sucking a finger, turning off the stove with her other hand. Her hair’s been put up, floppily sitting atop her head. The kitchen lights wash him out, they do the opposite to her; she looks golden and soft, her lips are shiny because she added too much oil to something earlier and ate it while she fixed him the better version. His chest hurts a little, maybe because he's not used to being awake so early.

“You make the loudest eggs ever.”

“And the cheesiest,”She smiles at him from behind her finger and spoons mentioned cheesy eggs onto his plate,“Good morning birthday guy.”

“Morning. What'd you make?”

She goes down a list that he can tell she rehearsed in her head over and over. It's probably the way she remembered what to buy from the grocery store. “Eggs, potatoes, cinnamon toast, grapes-the green kind-, oatmeal with brown sugar, and sausage but it's vegetarian so don't worry.” She arranges every mentioned item on his plate as she says it and then sends him to the couch where he can sit his food on his TV tray while she pours them both some juice.

She joins him a few minutes later, a plate of her own on her tray and she hands Jordan the remote so he can find something to watch. It's an Animal Planet day. 

“You need anything?” She sounds almost hopeful. 

He shrugs, “I'm pretty good.”

“You sure? Salt…? Pepper…? Jelly…? Or maybe some butter?”

Her eyebrow, the normal one not the one that grows the wrong way, is hitched and now he just has to see what she's getting at. He smiles amusedly for a second and lets the back of his head touch the couch and turns towards her. “I could go for some butter.”

She leaps up and runs into the kitchen, she doesn't have to mind the TV tray because Jordan grabbed his toolbox and reinforced them the year before. She was so happy about it, she said she'd show people when they came over as if they ever really had people over, but he believed she would one day. 

She comes back holding a crystal butter dish. “You know how I kept complaining because our butter would taste like the fridge? I saw this thing at the store and now we can keep it out and it'll be all melty all the time.”

He takes the dish and lays a good amount on his toast. The muscles in his cheeks are twitching. “I'm really happy for you.”

“I'm really pleased, don't make fun.”

“No I mean it. I'm happy for you that you have this thing to make you happy.”

She takes it back and makes a show of reaching behind herself to sit it on the counter.

“We can do that now and it won't matter.”

He finishes off his plate of food and stands up to go get changed into his work clothes.

He hovers near the couch for too long, scratching at his scalp, his words come out like he had to be pushed to say them even though he sincerely means them. “Thanks Bey.”

She looks at him over her glass of juice. He’s still hovering. She nods at him, waiting for him to go on and he doesn't so she swallows and says it outloud. “You're welcome, J. It's your day.”

His jaw is tight, the tips of his ears turn red, his nostrils flare out. He looks the way he does before a fight. He wants to say more. To tell her that he adores her, she's the best, most genuine human he's ever met but he can't. He knows she'd love to hear it but for the sake of them both he has to detach himself. It's hard to do. He hates disappointing her all the time but it's better that way.

If he was a less considerate man, he'd tell her how he feels and she'd eagerly tell him she felt the same way. He knows this because she makes no secret of the way she feels. He knows they worked together, that they could be content. She'd settle for him again and he won't allow it. All through his school years he was an angry, restless, dirt-kicking, piece of shit kid with no sense of real direction. He was too smart for all his classes, he fought all the time, he didn't care where he ended up later on in life only that with his luck he'd probably stay alive long enough to wish he were dead. 

Beyoncé was nice enough to see the good in him even then. She went to his open mic nights when he wanted to sing, listened to him read the shitty poetry he'd write. She had endless faith in him and more than that she wanted to be right about him. He wasn't weird everyone else was just stupid. They didn't get him like she got him. There were times when they were the only people they felt comfortable talking to.

Jordan regrets it. She used to want to be a social worker or a teacher but she watched him quit so many times and from so many things that she got it in her mind: quitting was okay as long as you had a safe place to run to. She was scared, a sudden change of heart, and she didn’t want to leave him behind so they took the money they'd saved and moved into a small apartment together.

When he’s being honest with himself he can admit that he let her give up because he was scared to see her go off without him. She works at a tattoo parlor and she's happy but her face doesn't light up when she talks about it the way it does when she's helping someone. He'd give anything to give her that dream, to at least see her try for it.

He gets home that night and Beyoncé’s in the kitchen, tank top and pajama pants, she licks icing off of a butter knife. 

“I made you a cake. It's from the box but I tweaked it. That's what they do at the bakery anyway.”

He comes around the counter and she lights the candles they'd used for her birthday four days earlier when he brought her an apple pie from the store. They said “20” before and she'd taken a knife to the 0 and made a weird looking “1” for him.

“Make a wish.”

He rolls his eyes, knowing she wouldn't let it go if he didn't. He wishes for a reality where he could be the guy she deserves, not just the roommate she fucks sometimes. 

He blows out the candles.

“Thanks Bey.”

He wants to say more.


	2. First Split

Beyoncé is turning 8 and for the first time in forever her birthday doesn’t fall on a school day. She’s a smart girl, she knows an opportunity when she sees one, so of course she annoys her mother into throwing her a “small gathering of friends over refreshments” in their apartment. She eventually wears Tina down, only having to compromise on her “no children under six” rule because her sister and brother have to be there. 

Her grandma buys her a fluffy pink dress and it makes her feel almost like a princess. Almost, she needs a tiara and a prince. She tells her best friend about this while they dig a hole in the mud with plastic spoons. He's in his rec center boys basketball team uniform and his mother would surely throw a fit if she caught him in it but he doesn’t care. Beyoncé admires that about him and when she’s 8, the age he is, she wants to be more like him. A nicer version that has more hair.

“Just ask for one.” He says, finally after silently enduring Beyoncé droning on about this life altering dilemma she was facing.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“No more money.” She knows this because the week before she and her mother sat up late budgeting for this party. Her mother doesn't want her to be surprised by the woes of adulthood.

“Collect some.”

“From who?”

He shrugged, the sunlight that had just emerged from the clouds in his eyes. “Sell lemonade or something.”

“No one would buy it.” No one who had money lying around to spend on homemade lemonade lived in their neighborhood and even if they did no one was really nice enough.

“You’re annoying enough to make a few bucks.”

“I’m not annoying!”

He paused his digging and frowned. “You’re annoying.”

“I know you are but what am I?”

“Annoying.”

“You’re annoying, all you do is play video games and listen to stupid music-”

“My music isn’t stupid!”

She stands up, dirt falls from her lap into the grass.“How would you know? It's all screaming, you can't understand anything!”

“That’s what the lyric books are for dummy!”

Beyoncé’s fingernails dig into the palms of her hands. “You’re dumb and you can’t come to my party.”

He keeps digging his pointless hole, eyes to the ground so she won’t see that his feelings are hurt. “I didn’t wanna go to your baby party anyways.”

“It’s not a baby party!”

“All parties are for babies.”

“You just say that because no one ever invites you to parties.” It's harsh and she wishes she could unsay it but she's too angry to apologize and he's too angry to accept it.

She gets inside and her brother and sister are sprawled out on the floor pulling at a fray in the carpet while her mother is in the kitchen making a cake from the box. Her stepfather’s home and standing by the sink, cramped in with her mother and they don’t notice she’s back. 

She wants to say hi and ask him where he's been but they look busy. She wants to be nosy but figures that wouldn't be smart, especially considering how muddy she is. 

She runs her own bathwater because she's trusted enough to do it and after she bathes herself she thinks to take the load off her mother and get her siblings clean too. They listen to her and she has a little more patience than an adult would. She manages to brush her sister's hair into a ponytail the way her mom does and her brother takes off into the living room as soon as she gets him in his pajamas.

When her parents finish their really quiet talk in the kitchen she makes her move. Pushing a chair into the already cramped space and climbing on top to make her presence known. 

“Daryl!” 

Her mom hates it when she calls him that but Daryl is her buddy and he's too fly to be called “Mr. Daryl” or “Sir” he rides a motorcycle and his life is so fast paced he's barely around; not like her birth father, he's boring. 

“What's up, kiddo?” They high five and he stamps a quick kiss on her forehead. 

“My birthday is tomorrow.” He nods, knowingly. He's the coolest guy she knows, next to Jordan's dad.

“I heard about it.”

“Did ya get me anything?” Tina scolds her for being rude and Daryl laughs it off.

“That's a surprise.”

Then she’s lost interest in their current conversation and she hopes he has enough class to know he can't show up to someone's birthday party without a gift. 

She hops off her stool and pulls her mom by the hand. “I need boy advice.”

Tina looks down, amused. “Don’t we all.”

Daryl snorts,“Funny.”

“Daryl you’ve gotta leave the room, it’s a girls only conversation.” Beyoncé does her best to say it politely.

He understands and kisses her mom on the cheek before dipping into their bedroom. 

They take seats at the dinner table, the light fixture above them glowing orange as it gets darker outside.

“What's up?”

“You know how I have strong feelings towards my schoolmate and neighbor Jordan?”

Tina nods. Beyoncé clasps her hands together on the desk.

“We had a fight and I’m asking you to tell his mom that he can’t come to my party anymore.”

“What was the fight about?”

“He called my party dumb and then he called me dumb! Which is worse!”

“You think maybe he’s a little jealous because you’re having a party and he’s not?”

Beyoncé never thought about it that way. “Maybe.”

“And that doesn’t make it okay but we have to have empathy.”

Beyoncé could understand, it sounded a little funny coming from her mom of all people but she took it to heart. 

She knocks on Jordan’s door the next morning and his mother greets her because on weekends he sleeps until noon. She’s tall, her skin is a deep brown and she always smells like blueberry pie. She’s a waitress like Beyoncé’s mom, she’s half dressed for work and she wishes Beyoncé a happy birthday.

“That’s kinda why I’m here. I have to talk to Jordan.”

She yells inside for her husband to wake him up.

“He listens to him.”

Beyoncé knows that’s true, Jordan relates to his dad more because he was adopted like he is. They can talk about it.

“You look pretty today.”

His mom smiles at her and Beyoncé thinks it’s one of the top 5 smiles she’s seen so far. “You say that every day.”

Jordan pads out to the doorway a few minutes later, he had slept on his face and his WWF shirt was wrinkly.

He stares at her until his mom leaves them to talk. “What?”

“I was thinking about it and I was being annoying yesterday.” 

He shrugs. “You’re always annoying. I’m used to it.”

“I want to bury the casket.” She vaguely recalls hearing that on television.

“Yeah?”

“We should have a double birthday party.”

He rubs his eye until it looks painful, “What’s that?”

“I’m moving my-well-the party a couple days so that it’s in the middle. Two days before yours and two days after mine and we can share the cake 50/50.” She got the idea from how their mother’s would pool and share their tips at the end of the week.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to. It’s kind of lame to just spend all day talking about one person and it’d be super lame if you weren’t around.” She scuffs the bottom of her sneaker against the concrete. 

When he talks his voice is small and she has the feeling it’s because he doesn’t want to cry. “Okay.”

“It’ll be on a school night but that just means we have to have it later and some kids can’t make it.”

“You ask your mom yet?”

“I asked Daryl but if I ask she’s gonna say no. She’ll be nicer to you.”

He sighs. Apologies are hard for the both of them.“I’m sorry I called you dumb.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you and called your music dumb and for that one time I threw your Iron Man doll away.”

Jordan’s given up on telling her it’s not a doll a while ago. He thinks it’s funny now. “It’s cool. He’s the annoying Avenger anyway.”

That reminds her. “We have to make you some decorations.”

They spend the next few days tracing images from Jordan’s comic books and Jordan staples them together and they get Daryl to pin them in Beyoncé’s living room.

Jordan’s too late to pick a cake flavor but Beyoncé lets him pick his own ice cream and they make it with Jordan’s stepdad, “8” and “9” candles stuck on top.

There’s a few kids from school, they play board games and they take turns punching a piñata because it seems like the safer alternative to handing them a bat and blindfolding them. Jordan breaks through after a couple of blows and it makes him the hero of the party. Beyoncé will describe it in detail in her journal later. 

Beyoncé doesn’t get many gifts from her family but she expected that because money had to be tight after they threw her party. It’s a babydoll with a bottle that, when tipped, looks like it’s empty. She’ll carry it around for the next year and force Jordan to pretend marry her so they can raise it. He looks like he anticipates that happening when she opens it and she pointedly sits it between them when he opens his gift. He doesn’t know he’s gotten three, two are being saved for his actual birthday and one of them is from Beyoncé. The one he opens now is a play-doh set and Beyoncé, no offense to his parents, thinks it’s a silly gift to give him because he always dries his clay out and that’s why he uses hers. It’s not like she minds sharing or anything, she likes watching him make the things they show on the box, she’s only ever made a snowman, so it works for the both of them. 

He leans over and talks quietly into her ear while they split another can of soda. “Can I leave my stuff here? You take better care of it than I do.” 

He looks like he wants to really keep up with it this time. It’s pretty impressive, she didn’t think they made play-doh in those colors and he probably didn’t either.

“If you tell my mom then okay.” Tina would think Beyoncé fell back into the habit of bossing other kids around and keeping their things.

Someone shows up late enough that their classmates had gone home, Daryl gets the door and the way he calls for Tina clues Beyoncé in that it might be her real dad. They stand huddled in, whispering outside the door and Jordan’s mom goes to back her own. Jordan is playing a game on the tv and he reaches over to squeeze her on the shoulder. She appreciates it, that’s how he hugs his dad. Her mom calls her over and she looks heartbroken to do it. Beyoncé doesn’t want to go but does anyway.

Mathew looks undeniably better than the last time she saw him. He’s nice, he was a good dad during his time as one. He’s wealthy now, he has a new wife and two more kids and he’s dropping by to let her know he hasn’t forgotten about her. She once thought he lived out of state. She went on a field trip the year before and passed his neighborhood and she wouldn’t have been able to recognize it if she didn’t hear her mother on the phone talking about it before. He doesn’t know her birthday passed, he sees balloons then assumes it’s today and she doesn’t correct him. He gives her 6 ten dollar bills and tells her to buy something nice. They hug and he gets into his car and goes home. 

She knows Tina won’t take it if she gives it to her straight up, she’ll have to break them into smaller bills and slowly sneak it into her purse as the weeks go by. She keeps 30 and once she gets change for a ten she’ll give 15 to Jordan.

He notices how out of it she looks. “You wanna spend the night at my house.”

“Yeah.”

“You ask my mom, I’ll ask yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took so long and it’s short but UKW I made it bitch


	3. Beware The Ink & Needle

Between herself and Jordan, Beyoncé has the best recollection of her childhood. She remembers dates and locations. You can’t ask Jordan to remember hardly anything before his preteen years, he’s not incapable but he knows they’re blurry at best and altered by emotions among other things. He doesn’t try on his own anymore. She admires that quality of his: He lives in the moment. She wishes she was more like that.

She knows people that rushed to forget and for a dubiously low price, they could get their memories "cleansed". Beyoncé could understand why they did it, they witnessed gruesome things but it wasn’t something she could stand to do. It was promised they’d only lose the traumatic memories, You’d remember your family and friends, who you are but it begged the question of who you would be once you couldn’t remember what you’d been through. It turned out to not be so seamless, people weren’t happier, most were absent minded and constantly trying for memories they would never get back and they were the lucky ones; the rest were losing their mind little by little and couldn’t reverse it if they tried. They were losing handle of their emotions and eventually they’d lose function of their bodies, they were dying. They knew they were dying and they could only wait for it to happen.

Beyoncé gets a lot of these people as customers, because before they go they want to do something daring. She likes talking to them, she tells them the good things she remembers from the decade before. She treats them the best and they make her feel like what she does is important and she values it so much that when it wasn’t legal for her to do it, short time that it was, she still found a way to do it.

Next door to her shop is a corner store owned by an elderly couple, the only store in the neighborhood that never stopped taking cash and it’s working out for them now. It’s always Valentine’s Day inside, Beyoncé likes that, it’s her favorite holiday and she forces Jordan to decorate their apartment when it comes around. Nothing will be different this time, she’ll pretend he did it on his own. She’ll slip into bed with him and he’ll humor her and be gentle by way of his kisses and gratifyingly harsh by way of his touch. The way people in love would. She loves him a lot and she can wait for him to love her back. Her workplace neighbors cannot, one of them asks her when she’s getting married every time she stops in.

They start while ringing up her things. For Jordan, she gets dried peach chips that she suspects he only eats because it’s the one food she won’t poach him for and she buys herself fruit snacks because she has the same taste buds she did at age 10.

“Anything new?” They’ve been together long enough that they look alike. Their skin is the same bronze color and their hair is the same, graying black.

“Like what?”

She throws Jordan under the bus. “He has to make a move first.”

Kathleen, the wife, is pushy. “Do you know when that’s gonna be?”

“My guess is as good as yours.”

Her husband is pushier. “But we don’t have much time do we?”

Beyoncé opens her mouth and closes it again. “Well? I’m only 20 so. . .”

“Going on 21.”

“I have like a good eight months to go.”

“Tick-tock.” She wonders if they know how Jordan lives. The way he’ll come home with different bruises, dried blood on his shirt that’s never his own. Most likely they see him working himself past the point of exhaustion and know only divine intervention would keep him from an early grave. It makes her stomach turn.

Kathleen interjects, probably seeing the worry lines threatening to take permanent residence on the young girls face. “You just have to drop hints.”

“I drop hints all the time.”

“Are you dropping hints or are you just saying?”

“I am dropping hints. Why would I lie?”

“You say you’re dropping hints but you also say you’re learning Spanish and we’ve yet to hear it.”

Beyoncé grabs hold of her bag and starts hurriedly backing out of the shop. “I am. Little by little”

She makes it out in time to avoid answering to the,“Say that in Spanish,” called after her.

She gets home around 7, greeted by the stray cats she and Jordan have started taking in as it grows colder outside. There are six of them and at one point they’d all been thoughtfully named but they argued too much over which cat was named what. Now, some go by fur color or marks if they have any: the white cat with black spots gets called Chip; like chocolate chip, the orange one gets called Tangerine, the hairless one gets called Peanut. The other three are Susan, Marley and Bob because that’s just what their personalities indicated they’d be named if they were people.

She changes into pajama shorts and a t-shirt, throwing her other clothes into the pile for laundry.

Jordan's left a note on the fridge telling her the cats haven’t been fed yet and she doles out wet food with a serving spoon because it worries her when they eat too fast. For herself, she makes a pack of ramen with hot sauce and cup full of iced tea and they take turns running around her feet and pawing at her knees.

Tangerine sits next to her on the couch, meowing and rubbing her face against Beyoncé’s knee. “But if I touch you, you’ll scratch me.”

Tangerine meows back and Beyoncé decides not to rock the boat. She turns on Family Feud in time to catch the second of two episodes and yells answers at the screen. Peanut and Marley climb up and snuggle up close to her. She doesn’t mind, it’s just weird. They’re a finicky bunch most of the time.

Jordan comes home at 8:43. She’s relieved but it’s normal for him. Not the time specifically but to get home before 11 because he knows nothing good happens to people out past then and Beyoncé worries about him.

He’s leaning against the wall and he’s breathing like it pains him. She can figure that it does because today he worked his most disliked job, loading delivery trucks for the deli across town. He hates it, not because it’s cold or because he’s vegetarian but because it’s monotonous. He’s likes being challenged and solving problems, he likes carpentry, he likes sculpting, but a job where he stands in one place and repeats the same action over and over for hours, he’s in hell. He makes enough selling his art now that he could probably quit that particular job but he won’t because they still need him. She wishes he was more selfish.

He walks behind the couch and places a heavy hand on the top of her head as a greeting.

She looks up, attempts not to sound as soft and adoring as she usually does when she sees him. “Hi.”

“I’m gonna shower and then we can go wash, okay?”

She sounds affectionate and gentle. “Okay.”

He doesn’t move for a while but he doesn’t say anything either. Chip climbs up and sits on Beyoncé’s lap.

He clears his throat and removes his hand. His voice is quiet too and she knows it’s because it’s tired but she wishes it’s because he was feeling like she was. “That’s weird. The cats.”

“Yeah.”

He sits his keys on the table and pulls off his jacket and sweatshirt and disappears into the bathroom.

The laundry room is on the first floor and so they have to lug the weaved laundry bag down two flights of stairs. They’re alone in there, everyone else either washes early in the day or goes to the laundromat elsewhere. They couldn’t be blamed it was unsettling, pipes had burst and the water that was dripping had frozen and was now melting little by little, dripping onto the floor. The room had a yellow tint to it from the lights and it smelled of cigarettes and weed because it’s where all the smokers usually hung out.

They have two loads and Beyoncé takes the one with dark colors. They have to stay down there and watch them or they’ll get stolen. It’s cold, Jordan takes off his hoodie and pulls it over her head. She hops onto the washer and pulls him close. He doesn’t mind hugging her now and she likes to think that he might even enjoy it. 30 minutes go by. Jordan’s playing music on his phone. His arms hooked under her legs and his lips on hers while the spin cycle rocks the machine beneath her.

He’s tilting her head back, kissing down her neck when a guy pushes open the door. No laundry in hand, startled to see them in there.

“I’m looking for my friend.” He eyes Beyoncé a little too long, in a way that’d be terrifying if Jordan wasn’t there. She feels him wounding up against her and tries giving him a reassuring squeeze on the arm to calm him down, he kisses her forehead.

“Haven’t seen him.” He sounds mean, in a less tense moment she’ll note that it’s hot.

He returns his attention to her and starts trying to slide a hand between her legs.

“One more thing.”

Jordan’s pushes against the washer hard enough for it to still, noise from the clothes inside still audibly rumbling around.

“What?”

His tone makes her flinch and he rubs her back as an apology.

This man has to be dim when it comes to social cues or just a pest. “You got a cigarette?”

“No.”

She hears the guy suck his teeth and knows no isn’t gonna taken as an answer. “I don’t think I like how you’ve been talking to me, man. Like I’m a bitch or somethin’.”

Jordan shrugs. “Maybe you just feel that way.”

“You lucky I’m not tryna’ be disrespectful in front of your female company.” 

Beyoncé rolls her eyes before Jordan let’s her go and starts walking towards the door, she hops down running and putting herself between them. Her sandals making an unpleasant clacking sound.

“Y’all it doesn’t have to be anythi-,” she’s getting pushed from both sides and it makes her angry.

“STOP! It’s nothing, it’s a cigarette.” She runs over to get her purse, grabs a carton she’d found earlier and hands it to the man. Up close he only looks a few years older than them. “Now it’s over, you don’t have to fight over it. That’s what they want…for you to hurt each other.”

She doesn’t have to say who “they” is. Everyone in the room gets it.

He leaves and she starts tossing the clothes into the dryer and he silently helps waiting for her to say something. She won’t, she pushes the dryer door shut and hops on it.

“Where’d you get cigarettes from?”

“I found them in your pocket.”

He sighs. “They’re old, I quit, I promise.”

“I know you did.”

“You seem mad.”

“I’m not.” She cracks a small smile. She wants him to know she means it.

He breathes out a laugh,“You gave him the whole fucking thing though.”

“We don’t need them.” He loads the last piece of light clothing in the dryer next to her and she kicks it shut. “And I felt his waist, he had a gun.”

She wishes he’d be more careful.

They upstairs an hour later and they’re both too lazy to fold clothes tonight. It’s 11:00, outside the sound of the civil defense siren starts up. There’s no real danger, not one that would call for evacuation but there was, for 3 years straight, nearly every night at 11. When it was declared unnecessary at the beginning of the year, people, “coincidentally” the ones that cleansed their memory couldn’t take the silence. Her guess was that it had something to do with hearing a sound that frightened you that you couldn‘t place the root of.

It always scared Beyoncé and so she picked up the habit of climbing in the bed with Jordan. They turn off the lights and make the cats come in the room with them. She holds the flashlight while he reads and she uses the light to look at his tattoos. Slowly but surely she was starting to feel safe again and almost like a person that he could love. He catches her staring and closes his book before pulling her on top of him.

His hands were cold, going up her shirt,“Wanna keep busy?”

“Why not?”


	4. Whack!

Jordan is a month away from 13. He’s hit a few minor growth spurts in a series of many that hardly anyone notices and they won’t notice until one day he’s taller than his parents. Beyoncé notices though. When he walks to school she runs alongside him, rolling backpack in tow, commenting that he’s gotten taller than last month. It’s annoying. He’s still considered a runt, too skinny to see his own shadow, and she wouldn’t like it if he started pointing things out about her body. Actually, that wasn’t true, he knows she would love it because that would mean he’s looking. 

Her family went to Florida in the winter to visit her stepdad’s parents and she came back weird. Weirder than usual, bossier than usual, she’s pretentious now and all she talks about is becoming a woman. She argues with her sister and so she never wants to go home, she doesn’t like the other kids at school because “they’re immature and so she wants to spend all her time with him. It was sort of that way before but she’s obnoxious about it. She wants ALL of his attention, ALL the time. Their mothers think it’s cute. They joke that Beyoncé has him on a leash and it only encourages her. 

He got a new friend in February. His name’s Sebastian, he’s 13 and he doesn’t know his mother. They don’t do much of anything. They watch TV, play video games and ride their bikes to the park to sit on the jungle gym and talk about...nothing. He loves it, he always has to entertain Beyoncé as if he’s the one begging to hang around her. She hates Sebastian. They cuss and sneak each other cigarettes and dirty magazines. Beyoncé doesn’t tell on them because she knows Tina would tell her to stop hanging around Jordan or worse he wouldn’t trust her anymore. Irritating as she is, he knows she’s not the betraying type.

He gets to stay out past dark and he knows Beyoncé can’t stand it. When the streetlights come on she has to be in the house. Jordan goes to Sebastian’s place (he likes that he doesn’t have to ask to go over and that he’s not being forced to go over, he can do what he wants) and they stay up late watching Rear Window and Sebastian calls Beyoncé Jeff because he swears she watches them outside from the window in her room. That’s what Jordan likes about him, they can laugh together and he’s the funniest person he knows.

He’s handsome, you could say that, Jordan wouldn’t say it out loud. He’s Jordan’s height, his eyes are a lighter blue and he lets his hair grow out past his ears and it’s thicker than Jordan’s would be if he ever stopped buzzing it low. If he was anybody else, Jordan would hate him. He hated him at first, only because he was always the nicest looking one in the room and they kept happening to be in the same room and he stared at Jordan every time, cocky grin fixed across his face. He bumped into him on purpose on the basketball court by the yard and kept pushing him, until Sebastian was punching him in the mouth and chipping a small part of his front tooth. Jordan hits him hard enough to make his nose bleed. It’s the longest fight they’ve ever been in and when they get tired they tell each other that. They’re friends then.

Jordan respects him and he gets it back. Beyoncé doesn’t. He starts picking at her to get her to leave him alone. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Beyoncé nags him into bringing her along to the skatepark in the rich neighborhood. The chain on Sebastian’s bike snapped the week before but that won’t deter them and neither will Beyoncé’s incessant whining about how long the trip is even though she’s the one on the bike. They have to walk because if they skate alongside her she’ll be left behind. They hold the back of the seat and push her along because she’s too short to use the pedals. It’s a one man job but Jordan likes touching Sebastian’s hand. It makes him feel warm inside. 

They get there early in the day and spend hours on different ramps. Beyoncé sits on her jacket and watches, annoyed. Sebastian calls her Jeff and she can’t figure out why and it frustrates her. The sun is glaring down on her, she’s hungry and she wants to go home because it’s not as fun as she thought it would be. They know this because she announces it.

“I want to go home”

Sebastian mocks her, cigarette dangling from his lips. “I wanna go home”

Jordan steps off his board to eavesdrop.

She gets up to face Sebastian. “You’re a rude little boy with no manners.”

He says what she said but makes her sound whinier. 

It makes Jordan laugh and it makes Beyoncé angrier that if she was to give the silent treatment, they’d like it.

“I hate you.”

Jordan and Sebastian share a look. Sebastian winks and Jordan’s stomach drops and he brushes it off to harmonize with him. “I haaate you!”

She’s tearing up and her breathing is shaky. She cries a lot easier now, that was another change. He feels kind of bad for her but Sebastian isn’t as empathetic.

“Are you crying?”

“No.” It sounds like she’s crying.

“You’re crying like a baby. Maybe we should get you home, the lights come on soon.” 

Then Beyoncé’s ripping the skateboard from under his arms and swinging it full force into Sebastian’s side, her face screwed in frustration and wet with tears. He falls to the ground and she casts her weapon aside stomping towards the park exit. She stops when she reaches it, looking behind her for Jordan to acknowledge her or try to stop her from going. He’s kneeling at Sebastian’s side and pulling out his cellphone to call his dad for him. He only glances in her general direction and scowls when he sees her. He looks back after a minute and she’s gone.

Sebastian’s dad is polite, he only seems a little annoyed he had to leave work early. He’s a doctor at a free clinic and Jordan’s been to him a few times. Sebastian says that he’s rarely home. He picks them up in his Honda Civic and they tell him that Sebastian fell. Jordan suspects Seb’ lies because Beyoncé could snitch on him in turn but Jordan lies because deep down he doesn’t wanna see her get in trouble. He knows what it’s like being labeled a violent kid and as aggravating as she is, she doesn’t deserve it.

Jordan spends the night at his house, he only has to call his dad at home and ask because his mother’s working overnight. They like Sebastian, he can be charming when he wants to be. It’s fine if he stays. They make a bed out of blankets on the floor. They listen for the sound of snoring from the other room and turn on Mad TV. Jordan holds a pack of frozen corn to his friends side. There’s a large purple bruise and Sebastian’s dad inspected it and said it wasn’t serious but it didn’t stop Jordan from worrying. 

It’s a commercial break and they’ve ran out of things to talk about. 

Jordan is the first to break the silence and it’s strange. “So, about earlier?” His voice is changing and breaking it’s more noticeable when he’s nervous.

“What about it?”

“Beyoncé.”

“Yeah?” 

“She’s my friend so I feel kind of responsible.”

Sebastian shrugs and Jordan realizes that he likes the way he looks in the glow of the television. “It’s not your fault.” He looks at Jordan and he’s flustered, chewing at his bottom lip. “You’re cool.”

“You sure?”

He leans in closer, the frozen corn pressed to his side making him wince and presses a quick but meaningful kiss to Jordan’s lips, pulling away before he could finish closing his eyes. “We’re fine.”

“Thanks.” 

“No problem.” They let their hands touch again.

 

The next morning Jordan’s mom picks him up and when they inside their building Beyoncé’s putting trash down the chute. She smiles at his mom and avoids eye contact with him. 

His mom goes inside, she’s tired, she works too hard and Jordan’s not an easy child to raise; it’s starting to show on her face. 

Beyoncé looks worried and he notices not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time that she’s really pretty and most of the time it’s on the inside and out.

“I’m sorry.”

Jordan can tell that she’s been up all night. “I know.”

“Is he okay?”

“He didn’t die or anything. It’s a bruise.”

“Oh.”

“Did you tell your mom?”

“I’m gonna tell her when she gets home.”

“Okay.”

“I feel really bad.” She wanted him to say he forgave her only he can’t find it in him to say it.

“I don’t think…that we should hang out anymore.”

Her eyes widen. “What?”

“I think you need friends your own age. I’m still your friend but...yeah.”

She wants to argue because that’s her nature but he must look like his mind’s made up and she doesn’t want to push him further away. 

“Okay.”


	5. Blood stuck to the skin.

Valentine’s day has came and went and it’ll be Easter weeks from now. Jordan is finally working up the nerve to take down the sugary sweet decorations. He could’ve done it earlier but for as long as they were up they tended to act like a real couple. It was highly tempting to stay in that bubble forever, he knows Beyoncé won’t ask him to take them down, he also knows that at some point they’ll have to come back to reality and it’ll bruise them worse the longer he puts it off.

He doesn’t do it right away. He plans to, he wakes up to Beyoncé standing in the doorway of the bathroom brushing her teeth. She’s half dressed. Jeans up to her thighs and a sweater that hung off her shoulders. She looks cute, he thinks. He tells her that and she makes a kissy face and poses. 

“Thank you, handsome.” She has a lisp trying to hold the saliva in her mouth.

He has to pee and they have to dance around each other to fit. He can feel her watching him but he’s gotten used to it now and she’s the only person he can pee in front of. Something tells him she takes pride in that.

“Are you coming straight home today?” 

“I don’t know. Why?” 

“‘Cause I wanna know if you’re coming straight home.” She looks funny, squatting, trying to fit into her pants. She’s been complaining about not being able to fit in her clothes but won’t buy anymore. 

He holds in a laugh. “I’ll try.”

That seems to be enough for her. She spits in the sink and kisses him on the cheek and goes into the kitchen while he showers. When he gets out he can hear the cats meowing loudly and Beyoncé whining for them to leave her alone.

He squeezes toothpaste onto his toothbrush and ties his towel around his waist and goes out to watch because it becoming apart of their morning routine.

“You’re getting your claws stuck. Hold still!”

Mr. Clean is hooked to her pants leg by one paw and swiping at Beyoncé’s hands with the other while she tries to set him free. Her jeans are still unbuckled and he steps over Marley to get to her.

“What?”

Tangerine rubs her face on her feet and Jordan nudges her hind legs with his foot. “Move.”

The cats stop jumping at Beyoncé and go to their usual spot under the couch. He pulls her to him and attempts to fix her button himself.

“When did you become the disciplinarian?” 

“They respect me.” He gets it through and her stomach pokes over the top. He has more than half a mind to kiss it, he settles for her neck instead. 

“I think I’m too nice. When I come home they’re in my closet, getting fur on my clothes.” 

“You smell good.” He squeezes her ass and kisses right next to her ear.

She pushes him off, rolling her eyes. “You and these cats. I swear, I’m gonna lose it.”

She grabs her keys off the counter and escapes out the front door. The cats sit there and meow at it while he finishes getting dressed. He relates to that feeling.

He works for his dad, molding ceramic and glass panels and eventually installing them. It’s a good job, he can work with his hands and that’s always fun. He alternates his time between answering the phone and cutting fish shaped tiles out of clay. His father’s mixing paint in the back room and that Jordan’s going to use on these tiles later. They’re quiet when they work together. Sometimes it’s because they need to focus but others it’s because there’s a lot of things that need to be talked about that they won’t. His parents are low on money which isn’t unusual, they’ve never lived like royalty or anything but he notices now they’re getting to old for the manual labor they’re used to doing. He brings it up while they’re building a frame.

“When are you thinking about retiring?”

The nail he has between his teeth falls to the ground. “When I’m ready.”

“When will that be?”

“Why?”

Jordan tries as best as he can to twist his features into an expression that is soft but he fears that it comes off ingenuine. “Just asking.” 

His father has kinder features, a gap between his teeth. Their eyes are similar in color and they have the same haircut but outside of that they look nothing alike. Yet and still, people find ways to tell them they look just alike. Maybe it’s out of kindness and if Jordan didn’t know he was adopted, if he didn’t vaguely remember the day he met his parents when he was four years old. He’d believe it because it would be a nice thing to believe. His dad is someone he aspires to be like. They were close when he was young up until he turned 13. He fought him all the time, his mother too, and his resentment only grew when his parents scraped up their savings and shipped him off to boarding school for two years. It hurt then, that they’d lost enough faith in him to give up what they could’ve put towards a retirement fund but as he got older he found out the actual reason was bigger than him. It took him a little while but before Jordan graduated he forgave them, they were low on options and only human. He grew to like that they were a family that chose each other and yeah, there is a small part of him that thinks about his birth parents but it gets smaller the older he becomes. He doesn’t say it often but he loves his adoptive parents, he worries about them because he loves them. It feels like the roles are reversing now, he’s the concerned one trying to take care of people that don’t want to be taken care of.

“I’m still young, Jordy.”

“I know. It was a stupid question.”

“You’ve always been a sensitive boy.” Jordan wants to disagree with that but the look of fond recollection on his father’s face makes him let it go.

“You think so?”

“I know so. It was showing it that was the problem.”

“Not one for talking.” He feels a little bashful.

“You acted out in other ways.” He zeroed in on the scar above Jordan’s brow and frowned. “Still do.”

It gets late, Jordan hugs his father for the first time in a long time and bids him goodbye. He’s sure tomorrow he’ll have a call from his mother to answer where she wrings out all the details from him but he misses her voice so he won’t brush her off or weasel off the phone. He loves her, he’s grateful she’s still here like she always has been, he has a hug for her too.

He passes by the shop where Beyoncé works on his way home. The windows have trash bags taped over them but he can tell the lights are off because they’re glaringly bright. He complains about them when he gets his tattoos and she usually gives him a towel to flop over his eyes while calling him a baby. He likes it when she calls him that and that’s why he complains. He also likes the feeling of her leaning over him, the furrowing of her brow when she’s concentrating and the way she gets excited when she shows him what it looks like. If he was being completely honest with himself, he got all the tattoos he really wanted a long time ago but he’s not ready to give up those things yet.

 

He feels time running out. Sand through the hourglass, his own anxieties closing in on him. He knows there’s a point where their relationship will either have to shift back into friendship or he will have be with her honestly. He doesn’t know if he could do it. An authentic, tangible relationship where they could fight about the correct way to put toilet paper on the roll. He’s never had that with anyone. He’s almost gotten that far, being his true self all the time, only to be told he makes a better friend than a boyfriend. That is a theme in his life and he could keep living on being just Beyoncé’s friend, he wouldn’t like to but he could. She’s not the type to keep friends with her exes. She’ll promise it and slowly distance herself. He’s terrified of that because he’s watched her do it and it was a relief due to her often rancid taste in men but a little piece of him sympathized. He’d hate to fuck up so badly and lose her.

His mind’s not clear enough to face her yet. He decides to wait out his internal stress in a bar, downing beer to rush the process. The music is loud and it can be felt rumbling through the floor and off the walls but barely heard over the voices of the other patrons. He feels somewhat at home but disconnected because this type of environment is only adding a soundtrack to what he feels inside. He gets bumped into once and he can brush it off. It happens a second time and he turns around asking the drunk man to move. It keeps happening and it starts to feel like a test. It’d be really easy for him to load off his frustrations by fighting this guy but it wouldn’t be fair. He’s been practicing keeping himself tethered to the ground, he’s going to at least try.

The grip he has on the neck of this bottle tightens and it cracks, shards of glass plunging into the skin of hand. He swears under his breath, always the quiet one, and figured it’d be in his best interest to head home. Beyoncé’s in the parking lot sitting on the hood of his car with her eyes closed and her head tilted back. The breeze that came with the sunset making her smile. He worries for a moment about how dangerous it could be for her to sit outside alone but she looks too peaceful to nag at. Instead he takes up the space next to her.

She opens her eyes and nudges him with her knee. 

“Good day?”

He’s still off-balance inside. He shrugs and goes on when she waits for him to go on because she doesn’t accept his silence as much anymore. “It was a day.”

“Was it that bad?” 

He holds up his hand and she winces at the dried blood probably, the really visible glass had been picked out except for pieces that were too small to grasp with his fingers. 

“What’d you do?” 

Jordan can’t figure out a way to answer the question without getting himself fussed at and it'd be nice to tell her how much restraint he's shown and get praised but he'd have to tell her why he was wound up in the first place. “Cleaning up some glass I’d dropped.”  
She’s skeptical but still goes in her purse for her tweezers and a couple of alcohol wipes.  
“Give me your hand.”

The way she sounds like his mother used to is funny until she starts wiping down the sharp ends of the tweezers and trying to use them. 

He starts pulling his hand away. “That’s gonna hurt!”

“No it’s not! Let me do it!”

“It’s gonna fucking hurt.”

“Jordan, it’ll hurt worse when you get an infection.” 

Her grip on his fingers hurts enough to make him grit his teeth and give up, resting his hand in her lap. She works little by little cleaning away blood and feeling around for glass and it’s not as bad as he expected.

“Are you hiding from the cats or something?”

 

“That, and it’s nice out today. It’s never this nice and it felt like a good thing to do.”

“That’s very indie movie of you.”

“Or is it very ‘functioning human being’ of me?”

“As opposed to?” 

“Smog and cat fur covered gremlin who slaves away her days only to return to her dungeon before sundown.”

He laughs, resting his face on her shoulder. “That makes two of us.”

“Well, we shouldn’t be. We should be living our best lives.”

“Meaning what?” He can feel and hear blood rushing to his face and ears.

“I need time to figure that part out but it just cosmically feels like we’re supposed to be doing something important right now or we should start it.”

“I’ll try and remember that.” He kisses her under her ear and she puts away her tweezers. 

“You’re glass-free.”

They get down from the hood and head up to their apartment. Beyoncé goes into the room and fusses with her feline pests and he stops in the living room. He bandages his hand and starts taking down those decorations. It’d be good for them.


End file.
